Ohio State-Michigan once again most-watched regular-season college football game of year

Death. Taxes. Massive ratings numbers for the annual Ohio State-Michigan game.

Fox Sports announced Thursday that the undefeated Buckeyes’ 27-9 win over the Wolverines last Saturday garnered 18.4 million viewers, making it the most-watched regular-season college football game and the second most-watched regular-season game in Fox history.

That makes it the fifth straight year that The Game was the most-watched regular-season game, not counting conference championships. Only the 2023 game, which featured both teams undefeated, had a higher rating (19.1 million).

Fox said the game, which kicked off at 12 p.m. ET, peaked at 20.535 million viewers from 2:30 to 2:45 p.m.

As always, it’s worth noting that this is the first year Nielsen began using its updated Big Data + Panel methodology, which significantly expands OOH viewing.

The Game also boosted lead-in programming for both Fox and ESPN.

Fox’s Big Noon Kickoff announced that it drew 4,358,000 viewers from 11:00 a.m. to the show’s end, making it the second-most-watched program in show history. That number also topped College GameDay over that timeframe, as ESPN’s flagship college football show saw 3.9 million viewers across that hour. It’s worth noting that BNK went long through around 12:14 p.m. on Saturday while GameDay signed off a few minutes after 12:00 p.m., which likely siphoned off some viewers who were getting ready to watch The Game. 

Otherwise, GameDay put up bigger numbers over the course of the morning, averaging 3.1 million viewers and peaking at 4.5 million to make it their second-most-watched show ever. Per ESPN, CGD’s ratings were 31 percent higher than “the competition” across the morning.

Numbers and semantics aside, the point is, a crapton of people watch Ohio State vs. Michigan every year without fail.